City where Ohio Gov. John Kasich will give State of the State - Lima - named among nation's saddest

Mike Waterhouse, newsnet5.com

3:08 PM, Feb 19, 2013

7:17 PM, Feb 19, 2013

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(Image from city of Lima)

LIMA, Ohio - The city where Ohio Gov. John Kasich will give his State of the State address Tuesday night is apparently one of the saddest in the nation.

A study by the University of Vermont found that Lima, Ohio, was among the cities that showed the most signs of being sad. The study looked at a wide range of emotional, geographic, demographic and health characteristics in geo-tagged tweets from the social network Twitter. It also looked at annual survey data from all 50 states.

"Among many results, we generate taxonomies of states and cities based on their similarities in word use; estimate the happiness levels of states and cities; correlate highly-resolved demographic characteristics with happiness levels; and connect word choice and message length with urban characteristics such as education levels and obesity rates," stated the study.

Last year, Kasich delivered his State of the State address from an elementary school in Steubenville. He is set to give his annual remarks Tuesday at 6:45 p.m. in Lima. In both events, Kasich offered a lottery for public tickets.

Kasich said the idea of moving the speech away from the Statehouse is to make the government more accessible to the people, and Lima felt like a natural fit.

"It just made sense. I like Lima. I've been there many times,"
Kasich told The Lima News. "There's good things happening there. It just felt right. Sometimes things just feel a certain way. From what I can tell, it appears as though the people are embracing the Legislature and the administration and the cabinet. It's great."

In the study, Lima was the only city in Ohio to make the list of 15 saddest cities. Others in that grouping included Shreveport, Louisiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Flint, Michigan; and Montgomery, Alabama.

Cities named among the happiest included Napa, California; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Ashville, North Carolina; and Boulder, Colorado.

Overall, Ohio was ranked in the bottom 10 for the happiest states, landing the No. 42 slot.